Culbert Report

"So, the first question we must ask ourselves is, what is a boggart?" Hermione put up her hand. "It's a shape shifter," she said. "It can take the shape of whatever it thinks will frighten us most." (Rowling, The Prisoner of Azkaban , p. 133) The boggart - "fear itself," as we behold it in Harry Potter, evolves from the British belief in a house spirit. The boggart exists to muddle intermittently in the conveniences of its house's inhabitants, (ie spoiling the milk, spooking the horses, chilling the beds.) As legend explains, a simple horseshoe on the door can keep boggarts away - but beware of claiming or naming a boggart - it'll become yours for life! This passage, as only children's literature can do, explores the mysteries of the boggart, touching on the immense and abstractions of fear itself in a particularly adult way of thinking and reasoning. What is the relationship between humans and fear? The trick to dispelling fear...

We realized what kind of people we are, sitting on our two folding chairs in the middle of a parking lot in Yellowstone, making our daily peanut butter sandwiches on a makeshift table (two cardboard boxes,) with utensils salvaged from a McDonald's run, marveling at the various makes and models of the RVs and campers surrounding us. Almost all of our earthly belongings crammed into our 4 door Elantra bounced (we have no shocks) across the country with us, a bike tied to the bumper, a box of vittles precariously laid over a crate of camping gear, and the two of us, two days into sleeping in the great outdoors, camping and driving through the upper 90's with no AC. A sight to behold! A sight to elicit responses such as, "now aren't you glad we have a camper?" or "y'all need any help?" or, resonant of my dad's personal favorite from growing up, "stay in school, kids, stay in school." Somehow we have become those people. And somehow we...